Daily Archives: November 7, 2012

General, Physics

Indian monsoons may regularly fail in the future

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New research suggests that the rate of failure in Indian summer monsoon will increase over the next two centuries, due to global warming [1].

The Indian farmers rely on the monsoons to disperse freshwater on agricultural land. Failure of the summer monsoons could be very detrimental to India’s economy.

Walker Circulation

The Walker circulation is a vast loop of winds that influences climate across much of the globe, including the Indian summer monsoons.

Walker

Image courtesy of NOAA

Walker circulation describes the air flow in the tropics in the lower atmosphere. The Walker circulation is generated by the pressure gradient that results from a high pressure system over the eastern Pacific ocean, and a low pressure system over Indonesia.

El Niño

The Southern Oscillation is the natural variation in the temperature of the surface of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean and the surface air pressure. This occurs across the tropical Pacific Ocean roughly every five years. The extremes of this climate pattern’s oscillations, El Niño (warm) and La Niña (cool), cause extreme weather events across many regions of the world.

The Walker circulation brings areas of high pressure to the western Indian Ocean, bringing the monsoons. However, in years when El Niño occurs, the winds get shifted eastward, bringing high pressure over India and the effect is to suppress the monsoons.

The predictions

Jacob Schewe and Anders Levermann simulations suggest that as temperatures increase in the future, the Walker circulation, will on average bring more high pressure over India; even though the occurrence of El Niño doesn’t increase.

The effect of this will be an increase in the occurrence of monsoons failing to form and an increase in drought across India.

Reference

Jacob Schewe and Anders Levermann (2012), A statistically predictive model for future monsoon failure in India, Environ. Res. Lett. 7 044023

Link

Indian monsoon failure more frequent with warming, IOP News

General

University finances could be hit by fall in applications

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The Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) has just published a report Financial health of the higher education sector 2011-12 to 2014-15 forecasts [1] outlining English universities’ finances.

In the report they highlight risk factors, which include:

  • fall in student recruitment and retention in an increasingly competitive market
  • failure to manage student number control
  •  further unanticipated public spending cuts
  • failure to achieve growth in overseas fee income
  • changes to visa regulations resulting in reduced overseas student demand
  • failure to comply with UKBA requirements resulting in removal of ability to sponsor non-EU students.

 

Income predictions

finances

The outcome

Overall, the finances of English Universities are predicted to be generally sound, at least up to 2014-15. The report however highlights just how dependent the sector is on student numbers and student retention. And this is at a time of introducing higher fees, generally low levels of graduate employment and a financial crisis.

Non-EU students pay the highest fees and are a good source of income for universities. In fact they generate about 32% of universities’ fee income, while making up about 11% of the total undergraduate population. I posted about that here.

Reference

[1] Financial health of the higher education sector 2011-12 to 2014-15 forecasts, November 2012 | ref: 2012/30